The Last Bastion

The Last Bastion

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The Last Bastion is an animated short that was released on August 18th, 2016.

"The Last Bastion" tells the origin story of the inquisitive transforming robot, Bastion. In this episode, we follow the forgotten battle automaton as it unexpectedly reactivates after laying dormant in the wilderness for over a decade. Fascinated by its unfamiliar surroundings, the curious omnic begins to investigate, but quickly discovers its core combat programming may have a different directive...

[Open on a shot of the sky above a forest in the day. Pan down and forward to a clearing. The words "Blizzard Entertainment Presents" appear. Ganymede flies from off-screen toward the boulders in the middle of the clearing and lands on one of the strangely cuboid-shaped rocks.]

[After landing near its nest there, Ganymede puts a twig in its beak to decorate its nest. Looking at the camera for a second, Ganymede turns away to break off a curled tip of a tendril behind. Putting the tendril into its place, Ganymede chirps satisfyingly and starts looking around.]

[Ganymede jumps to the front of the big rectangular rock from which it picked up the tendril. Curiously approaching the rock, which is now revealed to be some sort of a machine, Ganymede pecks away the moss covering the glass part. The camera changes to show the perspective from within the glass as Ganymede taps on it. It flies up and then to the side of the machine, and continues pecking.]

[The camera shows the glass perspective again, when the machine suddenly starting up, revealing the glass is actually the machine's visual sensory input and displaying monitor. Ganymede comes into the machine's view again, along with the interface displayed on the screen. Ganymede starts chirping and singing, and jerks away when the glass screen lighting blue, signaling the restart of the machine.]

[Pan to an open shot and show the machine, revealing to be Bastion, starting to move. It slowly stands up, moves its joints and brushes off the accumulated mold, plants and dirt. Ganymede is flying around Bastion, who looks at its left hand, then its submachine gun, and finally focusing on Ganymede landing on a tree nearby.]

[Ganymede happily chirps to Bastion, and both of them look at each other curiously. Suddenly a topography map appears in Bastion's vision along with its current location, a red target and the route there. The map embeds itself into the visible terrain as Bastion turns its head. Bastion then begins to follow the direction. Ganymede lands on the rock behind, watching as Bastion walks away.]

[Bastion continues walking through a field of dandelions. It looks up at the sun shining through the branches. Fade to Bastion crossing a big tree trunk like a make-shift bridge over a small valley of boulders. A doe near the camera looks at the robot, shifting Bastion's sight to it. The doe does not consider Bastion as a threat, snorts and walks away, and Bastion watches it leave.]

[Fade to a scene of the forest. The light looks darker and the rain starts falling. Raindrops fall to a leaf and pour down heavily. Bastion holds out its hand as rainwater gathers in its palm. Ganymede lands on its fingertips, steps forward, and drinks the water from Bastion's hand, then flies away. Bastion decides to follow the bird.]

[Fade to Bastion staring at its reflection in a pond; fishes and rocks can be seen under the water. Bastion's hand reaches out from behind the camera; its finger extends forward, and after a hesitating moment, touches the water. Nearby, a large fish jumps out of the water, and Bastion turns to look at it. Fade to Bastion watching a caterpillar intensely as it crawls offscreen along a tree trunk. Ganymede lands on the trunk and chases after the caterpillar, presumably eating it offscreen; the act makes Bastion surprised and perplexed.]

[Fade to Bastion standing in a clearing; Bastion and the grasses around it are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of white butterflies. It seems to pick up something on the ground, and turns around when Ganymede approaches its other shoulder. Ganymede lands by the nest it had built on Bastion's right shoulder, and puts one more twig in the nest. Ganymede looks up, when Bastion extending its hand, giving another twig the robot picked up from the ground to Ganymede. Bastion nods slightly, gives its approving sound, and slowly puts the twig to Ganymede's nest.]

[Suddenly, the camera shows a woodpecker pecking on a tree nearby. The sound echoes through the clearing, startling Bastion, who stands up and scares all the butterflies away. As Ganymede circles Bastion, the sound gets louder, and starts to sound like gunshots. Bastion looks in the direction of the noise, and the screen turns darker and darker.]

[After hearing it one more time, Bastion's eye turns red and it reconfigures to its Sentry mode, more dirt and plants flying off the minigun and other parts. Bastion starts shooting aimlessly in the direction of the woodpecker. Ganymede is terrified and flies away in fear. Bastion's fire tears down several trees nearby, and after a few seconds Bastion stops.]

[Bastion shifts back to Recon mode and stands up as its eye turns back to blue. Bastion looks at its gun and at Ganymede's destroyed nest on the ground, surrounded by its cartridge cases. It looks up to see the destruction it made and makes a perturbed noise, saddened by the sight before its eye. The interface makes a notification sound and again shows Bastion the route to the red target. It starts walking to that direction again, sounding distressed.]

[Fade to a shot of the sky and tree top from below, then to another shot of Bastion walking downhill in the forest from afar. The castle of Eichenwalde can be seen in the background. Cut to Bastion dejectedly approaching the edge of the forest, with an open field beyond. Bastion looks up to see the skyline of Stuttgart across the grassy meadow. Realizing the city is its destination, Bastion continues to walk forward and out of the forest. While glancing back at the forest, it accidentally runs into an object laying on the grass.]

[Looking down, it recognizes that object is a wreckage of a Bastion unit. Bastion looks around and sees that several Bastion units, destroyed and rusted, are littered on the meadow. Looking down at the wrecked Bastion under its feet, it Transforms its left hand into a tool hand to probe the memory bank of the destroyed unit.]

[The scenery around it suddenly changes, as Bastion reads the memory. Bastion seemingly is transported back to the Omnic Crisis, when a Bastion army was fighting German soldiers and the Crusaders. Bullets and rockets fly in every direction. On its left, an advancing Bastion troop was brought down by Balderich von Adler's Fire Strike. Two of the Bastions reconfigure into Sentry mode and return fire, prompting Balderich to activate his Barrier Field. On its right, a bunch of German soldiers run forward, only to be mowed down by bombs from the planes above. The camera circles around to show the advancing troops of Bastions and a plane being shot down, and returns to the front of the main character, frozen with its eye flashing rapidly.]

[The scenery changes back to the present time, and Bastion jumps back in shock. Its core combat programming reactivates, and its eye turns red again. Bastion raises its submachine gun and cocks it. Determining to finish its objective, it walks forward to the city, with its gun raised. Ganymede flies out of the forest and lands on Bastion's gun, causing Bastion to stop to look at the bird. Ganymede drops a twig on Bastion's gun, lightly pecks the gun and chirps. Bastion looks at city that is its target, then picks up the twig from its gun. As it looks at the twig, Bastion's eye begins flashing between blue and red, and finally stopping at blue. Bastion then puts the twig to its right shoulder, where Ganymede's nest used to be.]

[Ganymede is ecstatic, and circles around Bastion. Bastion revolves around to follow Ganymede away from the city. As it returns to the forest, Bastion hold out its hand for Ganymede to land on. Pan up to high above the trees, showing the entire forest spreading toward the mountains in the horizon.]

[The words "In memory of Yvain Gnabro" is shown. It fades to the Overwatch logo]